If you know what you want you could find it's forum and check out the for sale ads (I don't generally bother but really should), or post a wanted.Gumtree occasionally.

That's it I think.

My last 2 bikes I bought,SD990 was from a trader (I saw the add on fleabay) - it was an end of season deal and a good price so I jumped.DL650 from a local trail riding forum. I knew the guy from riding and he'd just reduced the price to it's trade in value as he was about to buy a new bike. I was about to do a trip to Italy via the Alps and I thought it'd be a good bike for that trip, it was so I kept it.

I live in Dublin now, but thinking to go over pond for next bike.In Ireland there is really good web place with everything to sell sorted per category, easy to search, with no postcode mandatory entry nonsense, like on all of UK pages

Quit a lot of bikes there, just most of them are "ordinary bikes" like Honda, Kawa, Suzuki...